ART/ARCHITECTURE; Looking at Ancient Egypt, Seeing Modern America
By DEBORAH WEISGALL
Published: November 14, 1999
BOSTON— ''EGYPT IN BOSTON'' is what five of this city's cultural institutions call their thematic collaboration this year, described as a pioneering venture into ''cultural tourism'' and ''an unprecedented look at Egyptian culture.''
''Pharaohs of the Sun: Ikhnaton, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen,'' at the Museum of Fine Arts, provides the focus. The result is an instructive pastiche, one that provides fewer clues to ancient Egypt than to the tastes and preoccupations of contemporary America.
The Boston Lyric Opera, whose general director, Janice Mancini del Sesto, instigated the collaboration, will perform ''Aida'' by Verdi, ''Akhnaten'' by Philip Glass (in a co-production with the Lyric Opera of Chicago) and ''The Magic Flute'' by Mozart. The Boston Ballet will stage a newly choreographed ''Cleopatra'' and the Museum of Science is showing the IMAX film ''Mysteries of Egypt'' as well as presenting ''Virtual Egypt,'' a show that provides computer tours of archaeological sites and tombs.
As a marketing device, Egypt is as old as its mummies; the exportation of its gods and their physical embodiments as works of art has been a thriving industry for a couple of millenniums. Even for the ancient Greeks, Egypt's art, myths and history stretched back into infinite generations, and despite the 18th century's pursuit of rationality, Egypt retained its mystical aura; entertainments with Egyptian themes constituted almost a genre in themselves.
Both ''Flute'' and ''Aida'' continue to influence our perceptions of ancient Egypt, keeping alive 18th- and 19th-century notions of that civilization, while ''Akhnaten'' addresses 20th-century preoccupations.
''In 'The Magic Flute,' Mozart invented a religion with an Egyptian flair,'' says Robert Levin, the Dwight P. Robinson Jr. professor of humanities at Harvard. ''It was designed as a smoke screen for the ideas of freemasonry, with its radical notions of political equality. Mozart's agenda included magic and low comedy, along with a sophisticated philosophical program. It was intended to cross class barriers, and it did.''
The earliest sets for ''The Magic Flute'' made use of drawings documenting newly explored monuments along the Nile, as European scholars began to unravel the intricacies of ancient Egyptian history. Seventy-one years later, the Ottoman ruler of Cairo commissioned ''Aida'' to mark the city's entrance into modern history; the opera was to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal and inaugurate the Cairo opera house.
Verdi refused the commission twice, dismissing Egypt as a country with ''a civilization I have never been able to admire.'' What changed his mind was a hefty sum of money combined with a compelling scenario -- a modern, historical tale of imperialism and passion, as opposed to Mozart's enlightenment parable of good and evil. ''Aida'' was concocted by Auguste Mariette, an eminent Egyptologist, the overseer of research into Egyptian antiquities and the founder of the Ancient Egyptian Museum in Bulaq, whose collections formed the basis of the Cairo Museum.
Mariette not only outlined the opera's story but designed the sets, costumes and jewelry, then went to Paris to oversee their construction. When the seamstresses could not get the costumes right, Mariette sewed one himself. The opera's historical accuracy, he believed, would be crucial to its success.
Mariette's letters describe his efforts to balance his re-creations of ancient garments with the requirements of contemporary singers, and he worried about the appearance of the cast. By contract, French singers had to shave their facial hair to suit a part. Italian singers did not, and Mariette fretted about how ridiculous their goatees and mustaches would appear beneath his meticulously researched headdresses. All went well, however, and the opera, its irresistible alloy of historical realism and doomed love galvanized by great music, scored a huge success in Cairo in 1871.
''Akhnaten,'' Philip Glass's minimalist opera, also depends on an aura of historical accuracy for its drama; the work casts the pharaoh as the founder of monotheistic religion. Whether he was remains an unanswerable question, yet the connection between Ikhnaton and Moses, who was raised as an Egyptian prince, remains tantalizing.
Glass's opera uses letters, poems and decrees from Ikhnaton's time -- texts written and sung in Akkadian, the language of Mesopotamia, Egyptian and biblical Hebrew. But its concerns are ours. Roots, origins, existential questions of belief: Was Ikhnaton a proto-Jew? And the opera tells its story in a postmodern way, in fragments ''much as we might learn about Akhnaten and his time,'' Mr. Glass writes, ''from the partially told story revealed in the exhibition cases of modern museums.'' We live in an age of evidence; we crave proof, even of what is beyond proving, even of faith.
These questions of faith make Egypt, with its grandeur and confidence, so compelling. In Rome, at the time Christianity was spreading, cults of Isis also attracted many followers, especially among the disenfranchised, who were drawn to its myths of resurrection and life after death. The mysteries of human existence have not changed since the Old Kingdom pharaohs planned for eternity inside their pyramids. They simply didn't believe in endings, in the certainty of dust to dust. And even 21st-century cultural tourists, who understand that the sun will die, share that ancient and profound desire for permanence in the face of all evidence.
Photos: The French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, (Harlingue-Viollet) devised the opera ''Aida'' and designed the costumes, including that of Radames, right. (Bibliotheque de l'Opera/B.N.)